Category Archives: Political

MR. MAILER CONCLUDES

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OLDmailer

MAILER: That walk was delightful–don’t get around much anymore. Ha!

ME: So, in its own way this interview has been a relief?

MAILER: In some ways, yes. It’s good to get out once in a while. But in other ways not at all. I’m terribly angry about this country’s direction.

ME: Not the first time is it?

MAILER: You’re talking about John Kennedy, aren’t you?

ME: Impossible not to. At first you loved the guy. I remember what you wrote about the 1960 Democratic convention: “Yes, this candidate for all his record; his good, sound, conventional liberal record has a patina of that other life, the second American life, the long electric night with the fires of neon leading down the highway to the murmur of jazz.” In fact, you called him “an existential hero.”

MAILER: Well, in looking back I was wrong about many things. That was one of them. His secret war on Cuba, the Vietnam war. His snarky little brother, Bobby. So I did what was called for. Joined organizations and protests about their policies and leadership. Now I look around and see virtually the same thing. A Black President. A man who seemed as a flame to moths and had the potential of becoming a transformational figure for real change. But nothing is different. America continues its horrific downward slide.

ME: I don’t disagree, but which slide are YOU talking about?

MAILER: Where should I start? Well, any war that requires the suspension of reason as a necessity for support is a bad war. Right now, we’re in several. And I include the one on our liberty in the name of security. Talk about the suspension of reason! Also, one only has to look at the stranglehold the corporate world and their media has on the American people. My god, they bought themselves a Supreme Court that allows the ruling class to own any candidate they choose. And finally, we have an ideological schism that is tearing the nation apart.

ME:  On the last page of Miami and the Siege of Chicago, you predicted the cultural divide. “We will be fighting for forty years…”  And we have been.

MAILER: A fight we have apparently lost. As well as losing any semblance of a middle class. It’s quickly becoming a society of those that have and those who don’t.

ME: In Oswald’s Tale you wrote, “If a figure as large as Kennedy is cheated abruptly of his life, we feel better, inexplicably better, if his killer is also not without size. Then, to some degree, we can also mourn the loss of possibility in the man who did the deed. Tragedy is vastly preferable to absurdity.” So you believe we are living in the absurd?

Mailer shook his head and rubbed his eyes. He was growing tired.

MAILER: It’s much worse. That quotation was about individuals and their lives. Now we’re talking about an entire empire disintegrating and I have no faith that we won’t take the rest of the world with us. Throughout my entire career people always talked about “Mailer’s ego.” But, if the world perishes, it will occur because of America’s ego. Rather than absurdity, we’re mired in tragedy.

ME: I’m surprised that you’re as pessimistic as this. You spent much of your life “boxing” for causes in which you believed. Was it your death that changed your attitude?

MAILER, reaching for the bottle and pouring the remains into his glass: Abbot. Jack Abbot. The letters that flew between us while he was in jail convinced me he was rehabilitated. After his parole I had it in my power to help him by getting IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST published. I think something changed in me after he fatally stabbed that waiter six weeks after parole. I never realized how deeply I was affected until after my own death. Now I understand my role in that will stick with me for eternity.

ME: Well, your political outlook was much more upbeat in 1969 when you ran for Mayor of New York City.

MAILER: Whose wasn’t? Of course I was hopeful. It was also 15 years before Abbot.

ME: Hopefulness or an ego trip?

MAILER: That’s certainly how they portrayed it at the time. But tell me New York City wouldn’t be better off as its own state? In 1969 citizens of New York City paid approximately $22 billion in income taxes to the federal government and New Yorkers only received about $6 billion from federal coffers. If the city kept that $22 billion in their own hands every neighborhood would get a lot more bang for its buck.

ME: Perhaps, but your slogan, “THROW THE RASCALS IN,” made the campaign kind of a joke, don’t you think? Isn’t that why it was called an ego trip?

MAILER: I liked the slogan they wouldn’t print: “NO MORE BULLSHIT!” And where is it written that campaigns have to be dull and serious? Certainly not at that moment in time. Even though the press focused on my succession plan, I took positions on a wide range of issues. I opposed compulsory fluoridation of the water supply. I advocated for the release of Black Panther Party leader Huey Newton. I saw the city, its independence secured, splintering into townships and neighborhoods, each with their own school systems, police departments, housing programs, and governing philosophies.

And no one seems to recall that I was endorsed by libertarian economist Murray Rothbard, who said, “smashing the urban government apparatus and fragmenting it into a myriad of constituent fragments’ offered the only answer to the ills plaguing American cities.” And finally no less a political journalist and historian, Theodore White, called it, “one of the most serious campaigns run in the United States in the last five years… [H]is campaign was considered and thoughtful, the beginning of an attempt to apply ideas to a political situation.”  Not entirely an ego trip was it?

ME: You do remember that you came in fourth out of five candidates?

MAILER, yawning: I was ahead of my time. Always have been. You didn’t pound on my grave-site because I was a “know-nothing.”

ME: I pounded on your grave because I think you are one of the most important and creative writers this country has ever produced.

MAILER, rising somewhat wobbly to his feet: Well, we certainly agree about that. But right now I’m a bit tired. Not as alive as I once was. And, as for my giant ego, would you mind helping me home?

MailerGrave

“I don’t think life is absurd. I think we are all here for a huge purpose. I think we shrink from the immensity of the purpose we are here for.” Norman Mailer

 

 

A PARTIAL BIBLIOGRAPHY OF NORMAN MAILER’S WORK:

Novels

The Naked and the Dead. New York: Rinehart, 1948.

Barbary Shore. New York: Rinehart, 1951.

The Deer Park. New York: Putnam’s, 1955.

An American Dream. New York: Dial, 1965.

Why Are We in Vietnam? New York: Putnam’s, 1967.

The Executioner’s Song Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1979.

Of Women and Their Elegance. New York, Simon and Schuster, 1980.

Ancient Evenings. Boston: Little, Brown, 1983.

Tough Guys Don’t Dance. New York: Random House, 1984.

Harlot’s Ghost. New York: Random House, 1991.

The Gospel According to the Son. New York: Random House, 1997.

The Castle in the Forest. New York: Random House, 2007.

Plays

The Deer Park: A Play. New York: Dial, 1967.

Short Stories

The Short Fiction of Norman Mailer. New York: Dell, 1967.

General non-fiction

The Armies of the Night. New York: New American Library, 1968.

Miami and the Siege of Chicago: An Informal History of the Republican and Democratic Conventions of 1968. New York: New American Library, 1968.

Of a Fire on the Moon. Boston: Little, Brown, 1970.

The Prisoner of Sex. Boston: Little, Brown, 1971.[36]

St. George and The Godfather. New York: Signet Classics, 1972.

The Faith of Graffiti. New York: Praeger, 1974.

The Fight. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1975.

Of a Small and Modest Malignancy, Wicked and Bristling with Dots. Northridge, CA: Lord John Press, 1980.

Why Are We At War?. New York: Random House, 2003 ISBN 978-0-8129-7111-8

The Spooky Art: Some Thoughts on Writing. New York: Random House, 2003.

The Big Empty: Dialogues on Politics, Sex, God, Boxing, Morality, Myth, Poker and Bad Conscience in America. New York: Nation Books, 2006

On God: An Uncommon Conversation. New York: Random House, 2007

Essay collections

Advertisements for Myself. New York: Putnam’s, 1959.

The Presidential Papers.New York: Putnam, 1963.

Cannibals and Christians. New York: Dial, 1966.

Pieces and Pontifications. Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1982.

Biographies

Marilyn: A Biography.[a] New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1973.

Portrait of Picasso as a Young Man: An Interpretive Biography. Atlantic Monthly Press, 1995.

Oswald’s Tale: An American Mystery. New York: Random House, 1996

Famous essays and articles

“The White Negro”. San Francisco: City Lights, 1957.

Decorations and Awards

1969: Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award for The Armies of the Night

1980: Pulitzer Prize for The Executioner’s Song

2002: Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, 1st class[37]

2005: National Book Award for Lifetime Achievement

2006: Knight of the Legion of Honour (France)

Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (France)

NORMAN FUCKED ME OVER

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I originally planned for this week to be an interview with Norman Mailer in Provincetown, but at the last minute, he called to reschedule. When I asked why, he simply grumbled angrily. The only word I actually understood was Capote and it was said with clear hostility.

Then I understood why he was fucking with me. I had interviewed Truman before him. Damn lucky I haven’t yet done Gore Vidal or Norman would have refused my call. Okay, I get it, though I really won’t be pleased if he bails on me again. Hell, I have a DEAD PEOPLE INTERVIEW series to write.

So I was at loss for this week’s post until I began thinking about how many progressive petitions, donation requests, and single issue emails had flooded my inbox—this week, last week, doubtless next week and forever.. I’ve posted about this before in 2011,(http://zacharykleinonline.com/personal-experience/love-me-im-a-liberal/), but after re-reading the column, I’ve come to a less humorous conclusion.

Fact is, I am bombarded by many decent organizations that care deeply about their particular cause. And,rightly so. But now I’ve got some serious questions—and complaints—about this “single issue” notion of change.

I hang with enough progressives in both my real and virtual life to realize there’s a great deal of antipathy about talking to people who disagree with our progressive programs and ideas. Personally, I think this is foolish. Of course, I’d love to change some hearts and minds, although I’m not optimistic about it. I do, however, think I can better understand how conservatives think about the society and world in which we live. And make no mistake, there’s a huge difference between honest conservatives and the right-wing jihadists who populate Congress and the Supreme Court. True conservatives aren’t about hating government per se. Though they do dislike much of the way our government functions.

Sound familiar, progressives? We dislike much of the way government functions.

Another group that progressives often shun is the 30 to 40 percent of the population that doesn’t bother to vote. This significant percentage includes many blue collar workers, working poor, and poor people—people who are alienated, apathetic, and flat out wary of a government whose programs seemed designed to aid everyone but them. (More about this later.)

And finally, if the emails I receive (DemandProgress.Org, Organic Consumers Organization, Ourfuture.org, ProgressivesUnited, Environmental Working Group, UsAction/TrueMajority, ActBlue, Democracy for America, 350.org etc, etc., etc.) are accurate, progressives aren’t even talking to each other! The problem isn’t the organizations’ causes—most are fighting for real and positive change—but rather their apparent willingness to go it alone. Maybe it’s because they fear that the amount of contributors and resources are too small to share. Or, perhaps the attitude is akin to the myth of individualism I wrote about in last week’s column on detective fiction (http://zacharykleinonline.com/writing/detective-fiction-an-american-myth/).

Most of my progressive friends laugh out loud when I bring up Jesse Jackson. They call him a self-aggrandizing publicity hound willing to go anywhere to garner television appearances or newspaper coverage. I don’t think Jackson is funny at all. Never did. Does he have an ego? Yes. Who doesn’t? His willingness to work with any progressive action, be it unrelenting opposition to racist behavior, unswerving commitment to striking workers, or belief in economic justice, gay rights, and a healthy environment is unquestionable—whatever one thinks of the person.

What makes Jesse Jackson even more important to me was his efforts to build the Rainbow Coalition. While that attempt fizzled, I believe it was the road-map for creating a true progressive political party.

I know. At best the most lasting effect that third parties made in American politics was to have their ideas and issues co-opted by a majority party in diluted form. Yes, there was Robert M. La Follette, Eugene Victor “Gene” Debs, and Norman Thomas all third party candidates, but never a lasting legacy of a national progressive party.

That was then, this is now. Never in my lifetime have I seen dysfunction equal to our present political system. Never have seen the money spent on buying an election as I do now. And never imagined I’d be living in a country that has one right-of-center party and one that’s even further in that direction. Truth is, our political choices have boiled down to ugly or uglier.

Jackson’s road-map is an incredible opportunity to actually create a progressive party with national staying power. But—and there’s always a but—we have to begin by talking to each other to find the common causes that will bind us into an honest coalition. Whether it’s Save the Wolves or Occupy Wall Street, we must find ways to form alliances and commitments where the whole really is greater than the sum of its parts.

If we can do that, we might begin engaging those with whom we share some values (e.g., civil libertarian conservatives), and the alienated, apathetic folks who have simply given up on government. The prospect of reaching out with policies and programs that can truly mean something to those who have lost faith in politics is in our hands. These people are our constituency and, unless we make a concerted effort to create a party that speaks to them—we might as well kiss our political asses goodbye. Because if we’ve learned anything over the past fifty years it’s that Republicans and Democrats are only going to work for the rich and powerful.

“As individual fingers we can easily be broken, but all together we make a mighty fist.”  Sitting Bull

PRIVACY? PUH-LEASE

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I mean, come on! Did we honestly believe we had any real privacy since J. Edgar first came to power in 1919, led the Palmer Raids and named future Supreme Court justice Felix Frankfurter “the most dangerous man in the United States” for, among other things, founding the ACLU?

Did we honestly believe we had any real privacy after we learned the FBI spied on Dr. King and every other civil rights leader and follower? Infiltrated virtually every Vietnam anti-war organization? Photographed people who attended any other type demonstration? Or, collected personal data on those who protested military and corporate recruitment on college campuses?

Those of us who requested our personal files through the Freedom of Information Act and noticed the multiple redactions certainly knew privacy’s limitations.

It’s never been just Spy vs. Spy; it’s always been spy on all of us.

And even more so after the Internet jumped out to meet us and we climbed right aboard. Where the information superhighway allows data to streak throughout the world and where countries’ boundaries are virtually meaningless. Sure, there were encryptions designed to keep your stuff private, but we all knew they were a joke. Easily broken, even the most sophisticated programs. Still, we sent (and send) emails to each other detailing the most private parts of our lives. We open accounts in banks without walls. We use credit cards to buy shit from stores we’ve never seen and don’t even exist in the “real” world.

Then along came social media and we all announced to our “friends” and anyone else who really wanted to know, what we ate, drank, what music we listened to along with our personal politics, opinions, and attitudes.

And people are getting upset because their calls are being recorded, our privacy invaded? We gave our privacy away decades ago but now we’re shocked? Puh-lease.

Where was all that shock when we allowed the government to pass the Patriot Act? We volunteered to forego our civil liberties in the name of security. Or, the awe when the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act passed—fully equipped with its own secret court?

Secret fucking courts! That’s not what I believe democracy or patriotism is about.

Yes, we’ve been told that these more recent anti-democratic policies begun by President Bush after 9/11 and reauthorized multiple times since have thwarted a number of terrorist plots. Can anyone reading this post name or describe any of these plots? I mean, if they were thwarted, what possible harm would be caused by publicly telling us about them now? Unless of course it’s bullshit.

You all know the list of anti-democratic freedoms we have relinquished in the name of terror since 9/11 and the only reason the shit’s hit the fan now is we’ve discovered the scale to which Big Brother has applied the laws to which we quietly acquiesced.

Did anyone actually believe that Verizon and other telephone and internet carriers would refuse to bend over the chair when the government came calling? This angst and dram is a piss-poor excuse for our refusal to allow these un-American acts to pass and wend their way throughout our society, institutions, and mentality.

So what is going to be done about the fact that we’ve delivered our phone calls (and now the newest travesty, our DNA) into the hands of Big Brother? The ACLU will bring its lawsuits, maybe a few members of Congress will bitch and moan, and the media will express outrage as long as it garners viewers. In other words, nothing.

So let’s make a deal. Collect whatever the fuck you want, whenever you want, but unless the government can prove that any information it has will directly place a person in danger, all their records ought to be available to the public. Completely available. If our government wants to know all about me, then I want to know about each and every part of what they are doing. What’s good for the goose…

I know the naysayers will argue the government would be unable to conduct its business if everybody knew everything. But we did just fine after Daniel Ellsberg released the Pentagon Papers, Woodward and Bernstein exposed Watergate, when Seymour Hersh disclosed the C.I.A.’s massive domestic spying. In fact, many would argue that we did better.

But we learned nothing. Actually, that’s not true. We learned to genuflect to a government (and I mean every administration I’ve lived through) and passively allow them to do it to us all over–again and again. This isn’t what I thought the phrase “what goes around, comes around” meant.

So, let’s demand the release of every government document that does not put a human life in direct danger. And, if it’s found that someone held back information when nobody was in harm’s way, well, then it’s time to open the jail cell doors.

I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

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I’ll be turning sixty five this July so you’d think I would have known better. From the time I quit college, I had no belief that what passes for democracy in this country could be seriously reformed through our existing institutions. I distrusted both major political parties and doubted it was possible to ever create a significant or even viable third.

Living without this kind of belief is hard. Although I have, in many ways, embraced the resulting cynicism as a lifestyle, it drains an important part of life out of you. Luckily I also trusted that working with people less fortunate than I would be a worthwhile way to spend my life. A romanticized vision of an existential existence personified by the doctor in Albert Camus’s book, The Plague. And for most of my years that has been true.

Creating a school for dropouts in Chicago, trying to stem gang violence, pushing from my alternative school platform for educational reform; working at Boston’s Project Place, a worker-controlled social service agency that provided free services and also struggled to create an alternative to the usual hierarchical structures; having a private practice in counseling; fighting in the world of law for workers injured or killed by corporate indifference. All these years, all these efforts fed the meter.

Even when turning to detective fiction, I harbored the notion if I were able to honestly write about people’s interior lives and relationships, that too would be worthwhile to others and more important than just living for myself.

Throughout all that time I refused to vote for any major party presidential candidate except George McGovern. Even when folks beat on me for refusing to vote for Democrats like Humphrey and Clinton, I continued to believe that real change could never come about through our traditional institutions. A belief that was reinforced through my work with civil and criminal courts which exposed the nakedly blatant deck-stacking.

Then came Obama and I dropped my guard. I’ve written before about why I supported him, so no need to tread over old territory. But we’re almost six years in and my armor is back in place. Even his quasi-reforms don’t cut it. Especially when matched with the same old, same old that’s been a hallmark of his presidency.

In fact, the best I can say about his election (other than breaking the race barrier) is the preview of our new demographics and that was going to happen with or without him, and with or without some half-ass immigration “reform” laws.

So, “I’m back, I’m back. I’m back to where I once belonged.” But it’s different now. Or, more specifically, I’m different. It’s worse than ever. I don’t know how the “seduced and abandoned” factor figures in, but I can’t even imagine how anything can change for the better, something I’ve always been able to do.

This loss saddens me. The space where there was once an unbending hope for the future has been replaced by fear, loathing, and a deep sense of generational failure.

Yes, my generation has helped in some areas–race, women’s rights, LGBT rights and more, but it wasn’t and isn’t enough. I realized that when I looked at The Way We Live Now chart I included in my August 29th post. (middle of : http://zacharykleinonline.com/political/what-the-hell-are-we-4/) So much pain, so many lost lives, so little gain.

It’s kind of shocking when one is faced with their own naiveté. Add to that the painful realization that I’m saddened by what I see rather than juiced by anger. I’m sure some of these feelings are related to my own mortality. But some have to do with revisiting that existential reality and truly understanding the hopelessness that doctor faced in fighting the plague. As my cousin’s comment said on last Monday’s post, “What has become of us?” What I didn’t respond but probably should have, “Twas ever thus.”

Even with all that I’m feeling, I’m just not ready to throw in the towel. Maybe it’s because I see the work my son and his wife are doing along with others like him. Maybe it’s because I see that the Internet has given the fight a powerful new weapon and arena from its role in the Arab Spring to the petitions and notes flooding my inbox. Or, maybe it’s because I’m a stubborn son of a bitch. It doesn’t matter. I’ll continue to vote in local elections, sign those petitions, do my write ins for president, and occasionally demonstrate. But what matters to me NOW is making sure the candle is lit for those who follow.

Keep Hope Alive—Jessie Jackson

AFTERMATH

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I honestly thought that last week’s post would serve as a transition to get me past the Boston bombings. But what has transpired here since the blasts simply can’t be ignored. Or, more precisely, I can’t ignore it.

When Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev was in the hospital after his capture, our mayor was asked how Tsarnaev was doing medically. Mennino waved his hand and said, “Who cares?” Everybody laughed; in fact, his response became a joke around town. At the time I didn’t find it particularly funny, but didn’t think much about it. Two weeks later and I’m thinking about it a lot.

For the past week Boston and cities around Massachusetts have refused to provide space to bury Dzhokhar’s brother Tamerlan who died in a shootout with Boston police, the FBI, and ATF.

When I wrote last week’s column I never expected the story to disappear. Did expect a blame game which is, in fact, happening. Expected congressional hearings, expected the bombings would become, as they have, a political football.

What I didn’t expect was the downright ugly about Tamerlan’s burial.

I understand and appreciate the agony and anger of people about these hideous, tragic events. I learned firsthand how a mass murder affects those connected to it when I spent much of a summer investigating the Murrah Building bombing for a consortium of lawyers. Most of that time was spent with people who had lost loved ones or were injured by the blast. They all were injured by wounds that would never heal.

But when a state and its municipalities refuse to allow a burial of an alleged bomber, it makes me sick to my stomach. We’ve had no trouble scattering ashes or burying convicted assassins and mass murderers before. Timothy McVeigh’s ashes were spread in an undisclosed U.S. location. John Wilkes Booth’s body at Green Mount Cemetery, Baltimore, Maryland. Richard Speck cold-bloodedly slaughtered eight nurses and his ashes were spread in the U.S. “Nanny” Hazel Doss, who confessed to killing her four husbands, her mother, her sister, her grandson, her nephew and others, is buried at Oak Hill Memorial Park, McAlester, Oklahoma. Lee Harvey Oswald at the Rose Hill Memorial Burial Park in Fort Worth, Texas. Andrew Kehoe, who murdered 38 elementary school children, six adults, and injured at least 58 other people, was buried at Mount Rest Cemetery, Clinton County, Michigan.

The list is near endless, but I’ll only mention two more. Father John J. Geoghan molested more than 130 children and is buried at Holyhood Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts and the good old Boston Strangler, Albert DeSalvo, is buried at Puritan Lawn Memorial Park, Peabody, Massachusetts.  If our state can provide hallowed ground for these criminals…

So why does it matter if a state and municipalities refuse to allow a burial?

My friend Bill often tells me that I rush to defend the worst of our people. He’s not far wrong–though I don’t think he recognizes my compassion for victims. I believe the way a society handles the worst of the worst speaks to the moral fiber of that society. I’m vehemently opposed to state-sanctioned murder (disguised under the benign term capital punishment) for the same reason. It reflects a blood lust for vengeance–something that eats at the decency of our culture.

Earlier I used the word “alleged” to describe the dead Tamerlan. Do I doubt that he colluded to set off those horrific bombs? Not really, but frankly it doesn’t matter. What matters is a cornerstone of the best of our social character. Innocent until proven guilty has, yet again, taken a back seat to the worst of our being. Better to eliminate the protection of rights in the name of hatred and security than to hold those rights up as a beacon to who we are and want to be.

Worse, these eliminations are rapidly becoming the nature of our post 9/11 society. Gitmo, anyone? Islamophobia? Executions? Undeclared Martial Law? Hell, undeclared wars. These aren’t isolated actions, but part of a whole which is successfully shredding what’s left of our ethical and legal fiber. And the greed which permeates our economic life is taking care of the rest.

When I worked for a poor peoples’ criminal defense attorney, or served on juries, I was constantly struck by the number of times judges would remind and remind the jury that the defendant was absolutely presumed innocent, no matter the charge(s). And was always shocked (when on a jury) how often those words fell upon deaf ears.

Furthermore, if Tamerlan was guilty and murdered and hurt all those innocent people who will have to live with their injuries long after he rots in his grave, doesn’t he still deserve to have one? Just as the way a society treats its poor, its criminals, how it treats its dead also shines a bright light upon our humanity.

Only as rich as the poorest of the poor,
Only as free as a padlocked prison door… Phil Ochs